TDM #003

[bequiet]

TEST DRIVE MEME
You wake, standing. A thick, muddy red dust coats your skin and clothes - it sticks to your tongue and blocks your vision. Inhale and it chokes you, exhale and your breath puffs out in front of your face in a transparent maroon cloud. It tastes of copper, tangy and harsh. Movement is difficult, every limb tingles and aches. Look to your left, your right. Evenly spaced in each direction stands another person indistinguishable in every way from the next. You're disoriented and lethargic, unable to grasp onto a single thought. A pinprick of light blooms ahead and grows steadily larger; a door has opened.

Hands grip your wrists, push at the small of your back and guide you out of the darkness into a room with four walls and a thin, sagging ceiling. The plaster is peeling, the air is musty, and the floor is slick. White plastic piping juts up from the center and curves into multiple spouts, clean water flowing in uneven streams. Those hands pull your clothes off and clear the dust from your body, redress you in handsewn jumpsuits.

A finger is pressed to your lips. Kind eyes meet your own and a single word is whispered - hush.

Led out of the room in a line, you’re taken down a short hallway and into another, much larger room. There’s a woman waiting for you there, a child hugging her leg, and a cloth bag in her hands. She reaches in and pulls out a device, passes one to each of you. Once finished, she begins to move both hands in graceful gestures, a language. One of the people who helped you lifts their device and the screen lights up, tracks the woman’s hands. Letters appear on the screen and you understand the device’s purpose. She tells you what she knows and it’s not much.

This world is haunted. Noise attracts them, so it is not allowed. Communication is through body language, soundless writing, and the device. She tells you that your feet must be light and your mouth never used. There is a community outside these doors, where you can survive together, but only if you agree to one thing: complete and total silence. You'll have time to talk it over. Acceptance allows you to journey outside. The ground is marked in pathways of sand, lining the paths to each building and everywhere in between. You notice that the locals hold their devices always, aloft and glance to it often. It will not vibrate or make a sound to signal a message.

Notices appear. Rules. Guidelines. Feet on the sand and never anywhere else. To open a door you brush your fingers along the hinges - oiled and you may enter. If not, take the brush from the can sitting nearby and coat the metal with the dark liquid. You're to settle into your new home.

Caught me unawares
Content Warnings: Confusion, disorientation
Themes: Survival, horror, it's like groundhog day

The ending of the floor has caught me unawares. This must be the reason why I’m falling down the stairs.

That night, when you fall asleep, you dream of your life before The Quiet Place. At first it's the happiest moments of your life played on repeat, over and over. Everything good and sweet and fun. The second night, it's much the same. You go to bed anticipating another restful and pleasant sleep. But on the third night it changes.

For everyone, it starts the same. There's a long hallway with a door at the end. You walk towards it with nowhere else to go. You twist the knob and when you step forward, the floor ends and you fall. Falling lasts for seconds, minutes, or hours and when you land, it's with a jolt and a cloud of red dust all around you. There's someone else next to you, stumbling, coughing and choking on that familiar dirt that coats your tongue and mouth. When your eyes meet, everything blurs and you're falling again - this time, when you land, it's inside that dream from the first night. Only you're not alone. They're with you. The only way out is to experience the dream together. And when you do wake up, for real, that same red dirt is on your hands.

Falling down the stairs
Content Warnings: Confusion, disorientation
Themes: Survival, horror, it's like groundhog day

The ending of the floor has caught me unawares. This must be the reason why I’m falling down the stairs.

That night, when you fall asleep, you dream of your life before The Quiet Place. At first it's the worst moments of your life played on repeat, over and over. Everything bad and sour and awful. The second night, it's much the same. You go to bed anticipating another restless and dreadful sleep. But on the third night it changes.

For everyone, it starts the same. There's a long hallway with a door at the end. You walk towards it with nowhere else to go. You twist the knob and when you step forward, the floor ends and you fall. Falling lasts for seconds, minutes, or hours and when you land, it's with a jolt and a cloud of red dust all around you. There's someone else next to you, stumbling, coughing and choking on that familiar dirt that coats your tongue and mouth. When your eyes meet, everything blurs and you're falling again - this time, when you land, it's inside that nightmare from the first night. Only you're not alone. They're with you. The only way out is to experience the nightmare together. And when you do wake up, for real, that same red dirt is on your hands.

OOC
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NAVIGATION

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Comments

[voidmage]

[Since her escape, El has had candy but not cotton candy. Apparently, there's a different. From this angle she can only see part of the faces of the people they're supposed to be watching but the man next to her and the skinny one do look a little alike. How did he get so big? Did the fluffy spun sugar make him that way? That seems ridiculous even to her. Maybe he got big the way she got powers.] It's sad that it didn't stay down.

[El does not let go of his arm. Superstrength is not one of her abilities but she does her best impression as they reach the top. Her eyes are wide and she shakes her head quickly in answer to his question.

Does she look or not as they hurtle towards the ground at speeds unknown? Well, if she's going to die on this things, El might as well see it happen.]

[paragon]

It's okay. [ He looks at the boy in front of them, older but not much bigger than Eleven, still a little green around the gills and with, Steve knows, just a penny left in his pocket. ] I went back for more.

[ And he'd kept it down that time.

Little girls don't need superstrength to have a formidable grip, and as the wind starts to rush in their ears he says above it, ] It's supposed to be fun! [ and lifts his free arm from the bar into the air in demonstration. Look, Ma, no hands. ]

[voidmage]

[More candy or more rides - that's the real question here. Maybe both. It's not something she dwells on for long because there's just no chance to. The coaster is flying like a bullet on the tracks. El's mouth opens as if in a silent scream but nothing comes out lest that feeling bubbling up in her stomach rise up and accidentally break something like she had with the windows in the cabin.

She can't identify if it's a good feeling or a bad one, El will have to take Steve at his word that this is fun. And it is - in a terrifying way.]

Why is it fun? [El shouts be heard over the sound of air whooshing by. What she means is actually why do people think this is fun.]

[paragon]

[ Both, really — Bucky had only needed to coerce him this time because Steve had known it was a bad idea right after he'd eaten. It wasn't the first or last time he'd ridden the Cyclone, even when his joints or lungs had creaked and wheezed as much as the coaster for his efforts. ]

Because it's scary, but then you live through it, [ he replies, leaning closer to her ear so that he doesn't have to shout quite so loud. The latter part of that equation hasn't always been a prerequisite for him, but his relationship with his own mortality has always been stubborn at best, tenuous at worst. It's not about him. ]

[voidmage]

[That sounds... wrong. Completely wrong. El has faced plenty of scary things and lived but it wasn't fun at all. This has a different feeling. Like the first time El discovered the lay-z-boy. Safe but startling.

She shakes her head adamantly.]

No. Not like that. Bad men and demogorgons are not fun. [The feeling she had afterwards was more like relief when the fear eventually subsided. It lacked the excitement that scary fun things have during the moment. El sees that now.]

[paragon]

[ Steve frowns at her at that, not in disapproval. He's always figured he experiences fear a little differently than most people. He's still plenty familiar with it, despite what some of them would have to say on the matter, but there's a certain fierce joy, at the very least, in facing it head on that he can't quite find in anything else.

Still, there are certain times when it's only a necessity, and the reward is loss or the sense of coming too close to it for comfort. The latter's familiar as far back as struggling to take full breaths over a bowl of steaming water heated on the stove, not sure he'd ever be able to. ]

Maybe because you know you'll get through it, then. [ He pauses, let's the wind rush past their ears and between them. ] It's called the Cyclone. What do you think?

[ Enough of the existential talk; he's more concerned with whether she's having fun here and now, dream or not. ]